pilots with missing wingmen. They ended up splitting into six fighters in each group. Fish was still the designated squadron leader of the Gods of War, and Poser kept the Demon Dawgs.
'Let's go shoot some tankheads,' Poser ordered.
'Roger that,' Fish said. 'Okay, Gods of War, here we go.'
'Look out, Warlord One!' Deuce dropped in first on the line, burning through three different tanks as she boomed overhead at treetop height. She passed the line at over nine hundred kilometers per hour causing the tall oaks to sway almost to the snapping point. 'Guns, guns, guns!'
'Holy hell, I'm glad to see you mecha jocks!' Warboys replied. The screaming fighters overhead were enough of a distraction to the enemy troops that the Warlords managed to take a breath, regroup, and fight their way back to their feet.
'Fox three!' Deuce said as she rolled up into a long loop-over to bleed off some of her velocity. She hit the mode toggle as she came back around to the five o'clock position of her looping trajectory, going to bot mode. Skinny was right on her wing, following suit. The two mecha twisted and turned in midair like ballerinas.
'Fox three!' Skinny shouted. Her bot-mode mecha overshot Deuce slightly, but intentionally. Deuce could see her bounce to the ground, running and flipping over enemy mecha, slamming down on the Arcadian tanks with her armored feet as she did so. Deuce was right behind her.
'Guns, guns, guns!' Deuce washed the line with her DEG, blasting a tank off the back of Warlord Nine. After firing her mammoth handheld DEG, she turned and rammed the mecha's left elbow through the cockpit of a tank behind her. The enemy tank grabbed at her, pulling her backward and almost off balance. With right pedal and manipulation of the armature controls, she rolled off the enemy tank and took her bot through a handspring over the top of it, then tucked into one of her trademark judo rolls. She followed through the roll by putting the elbow of the forearm of the mecha down first and then the back, buttocks, legs, and then back up to her feet, firing away with the shoulder-mounted auto-cannons. Her DEG in her left hand waved back and forth, looking for targets to either shoot or smack.
'Warning, enemy targeting system is acquiring lock. Warning . . .'
Still a little dizzy from her roll, Deuce used her DTM targeting system, focusing on the vehicle that was targeting her. It wasn't a vehicle at all, but instead a mobile AA and anti-tank turret firing away at her. She kicked at two of the pedals on her left side and yanked the stick, sending the bot spinning like a figure skater.
She couldn't get a lock with her DEG, and she was way too close for missiles. She decided to go with the DEG anyway. 'Guns, guns, guns!'
The DEG directed a plasma burst of energy that tracked across the AA box, burning away one of the barrels of the cannons. The missing barrel caused the box to misfire and explode on itself, destroying the box.
'Where are you, Skinny?'
'I'm behind you, Deuce.' Skinny shouted over the net, and Deuce spotted her on the right and behind her. 'Look out, Warlord Three! You've got one on your three-nine line!'
Deuce launched herself in the air with a giant leap, and she kept her mind on that damned tank. She rolled over at the crux of her jump and slammed feet forward into the upper torso of the bot-mode tank like a martial artist doing an aerial double frontkick. The two mecha clanged together briefly, but Deuce's forward momentum sent the enemy tank flailing over backward and through a middle-aged fir tree. The tree snapped off at the base of the trunk. Warlord Three pounced just in time to pick up the tree and stab it through the cockpit of the Arcadian mecha. Pieces of fir tree flew everywhere and erupted into flame in a ball of smoke and ash.
'Thanks, Deuce!'
'Welcome, Three.' Deuce continued forward and out of the way as Skinny came in behind her, settling up to her mecha back-to-back fashion. The two of them scanned for more targets. There were plenty. It was more of an issue of which one to go after first.
'Two o'clock, Deuce!' Skinny shouted and pounced away toward another bot-mode enemy tank, her auto-cannons firing off forty-millimeter rounds as she launched over it in a full throttle leap. She pitched forward over Deuce's head, firing her DEG from the hip into the tank's wingman before it even realized what had happened. But the shot wasn't a kill shot, and the enemy wingman turned on Skinny and started to raise his cannon to track her.
'I got it!' Jawbone butted in as she landed on top of the bot, squashing the
